Michael Grade is one of the great figures of British broadcasting. I remember the cheers echoing around the BBC when it was announced that he was returning to the corporation as its chairman in 2004. His long career in broadcasting was a welcome shield against the tinkering bureaucrats that governments normally consider for these kinds of top public roles. Grade also felt like ‘one of ours’ when, in 2022, he was given the chair at Ofcom. He was a practitioner who believed in the power of public broadcasting, and he thought that the best thing for programme makers was to make programmes rather than fret about regulation.
Now that Grade has stepped down at the end of his term, we are getting Grade Unleashed. He has given a series of interviews about what he thinks of British media and the tasks of the regulator, and there is no sign of any waning of energy at the age of 83. He is a man of genuine charm. But his departing assessment of the state of the industry – when asked by Politico how hopeful he was about the future of British TV he gave a score of 2 out of 10 – underlines that being a regulator was probably one of the less illustrious of his roles.
A colleague once said that the best way to understand Grade was to think of him as a supreme talent agent. He was the son of an agent, and his uncles were impresarios. That puts him, at his happiest, into a certain time and culture. A friend who worked with him at ITV said that:
